DOVER-FOXCROFT – After 16 months of negotiations, SAD 68 directors and the SAD 68 Education Association apparently have reached a compromise on a contract.

A tentative agreement reached Thursday evening will be presented to teachers later this week for ratification. Once that approval has been received, the SAD 68 board of directors will hold a special meeting to adopt the agreement.

“I don’t expect any problems; we think it’s a fair settlement,” Ingrid Nelson, co-president of the education association and a fifth-grade teacher at SeDoMoCha Middle School, said Monday. She said the negotiations team was pleased to be finished.

SAD 68 Superintendent Donald Siviski said the agreement is a good one. “If they ratify the tentative agreement, it will be a terrific contract for all involved,” he said Monday.

As proposed, the agreement will be valid for three years, from September 2000 to August 2003.

“There was just a lot of different issues, and it took a long time,” Nelson said about negotiations. She said the association did use the mediation process, but that process did not result in a contract.

The association also filed a grievance for payment of step increases, which was successful, but it wasn’t until a fact-finding panel was engaged and arrived at a settlement proposal that a compromise was reached on a contract, she said. The tentative agreement is close to what the fact-finding panel recommended, according to Nelson.

Siviski said there was not one “stumbling block” during the negotiations. However, major increases were reflected in wages and health insurance. The wage increases were necessary to remain competitive, and the health insurance increases couldn’t be controlled, he said.

The superintendent said the board is most appreciative of staff efforts in meeting the educational needs of children in the district, but the board members also are sensitive about increasing costs because they believe the burden upon the local taxpayer has reached the limit of reasonable expectations.

Directors, Siviski said, have had a daunting task to deal with increases in health insurance benefits, rising “fixed” costs such as oil and transportation, the need to improve school facilities and offer a competitive wage and salary scale for all employees, yet keeping taxpayers in mind.

This year, the district is faced with a proposed school budget that reflects 3.9 percent more in spending than last year and increases in assessments to towns of 7 to 9 percent because of the property-based state funding formula, he said.

The school board “balances the wants and needs of each school community and the requirements of state and federal law with a reasonable and acceptable level of financial support from each town,” Siviski said.